Technique:
Merde Happens
Cheater Meter: 5A’s
When one of your predecessors as the president of France was known to have had a secret second wife and an illegitimate daughter, the bar for adulterous sins is pretty high. Beyond that, Nicolas Sarkozy had the added benefit, as it were, of having a wife who cheated on him
first but left him for another man. Mrs. Sarkozy moved back just before her husband’s election, but the damage was done—he had already begun a series of affairs, including one with the woman who would become his third wife, Carla Bruni. Divorce your wife to marry a supermodel who’s also an heiress? C’est la vie.
Technique: It’s Good to Be The Prince
Cheater Meter: 4.5 A’s
Edward VIII famously abdicated his throne to be with “the woman I love.” Prince Charles didn’t have to go to all that trouble. Despite marrying Diana in 1981, Charles continued have an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he had met in 1970. Then in 1993, when the British tabloids unearthed an audiotape of Charles and Camilla talking dirty on their cell phones, the Prince not only matter-of-factly confessed to a television reporter about the affair, he even boldly claimed that his father had approved of it. (Prince Phillip vehemently denied the allegation.) With 18 months, Diana confessed to adultery of her own and not longer after she was killed in a car crash, freeing Charles to marry the woman he loved, Camilla.
Technique: Rock of Love
Cheater Meter: 4 A’s
In the summer of 2003, the previously platinum reputation of Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant was nearly permanently tarnished when the 24-year-old NBA star was accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old hotel employee in Colorado. Though the case was eventually settled out of court and Bryant lost several endorsements (some of which he regained), his career has never been better—he won his first MVP award in 2008 and a fourth NBA title in June. But Bryant saved his smoothest moves for his marriage. Following a tearful public confession, and just three days after prosecutors brought charges against him, Bryant took his wife, Vanessa, to a jewelry store in LA and purchased a $4 million diamond ring. That buys a lot of forgiveness.
Technique: Play It Straight
Cheater Meter: 3.5 A’s
Frankly, it’s not exactly clear how Senator David Vitter survived his prostitution scandal—almost any politician with any shame would have resigned as soon as the story broke (see Spitzer, Eliot). But after the Louisiana senator’s name popped up in a list of phone records released by D.C. Madam Deborah Palfrey and the senator publicly apologized—for added measure, he claimed he had also confessed to God—with his wife by his side, the story somehow managed to disappear. Politically, Vitter had two things going for him: one, a Democratic governor who would have appointed his replacement, giving fellow Republicans tremendous motivation to forgive him quickly and move him. Second and perhaps more importantly, Vitter's transgression were with women. A similar scandal only months later in which Senator Larry Craig was arrested for attempting to solicit sex in an airport bathroom attracted a much harsher response from Republicans and forced the Idaho senator to serve the rest of his term in humiliating isolation, shunned by his former Senate colleagues as a pariah.
Technique: Be Italian
Cheater Meter: 3.5 A’s
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been bogged down in an endless sex scandal in recent months, in which he's faced a messy divorce, allegations that he slept with a minor and patronized prostitutes, and photos of naked parties at his estate popping up in the tabloids. His explanations have been equally ridiculous: in response to the poolside party photos he asked reported "Do you take a shower dressed?" and he's fended off accusations of sleeping with an 18-year old model by saying that nothing "spicy" happened between them. While Berlusconi's approval Cheater Meter has taken a major hit (he dropped from approval Cheater Meters of around 75 percent before the scandals began to just under 50 percent this week), he's somehow survived the onslaught so far in relatively decent shape. The moral of the story? Just like Sarkozy, If you're going to be a lecherous politician, be sure to do it in a country that's used to such things.
Technique: Blame the Messenger
Cheater Meter: 3 A’s
Denying affairs was something of an annual rite of passage for Bill Clinton, who entered the national spotlight with a reputation as a major horndog. After mostly dodging bullets with Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and several other women, the President was accused of having a relationship with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky. His instinct? Lie. And go on the offensive. Several days after the president’s staunch denial of an affair, Hillary Clinton went on the Today show to claim the controversy was all part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” But six months later, in videotaped grand jury testimony, it became clear that Clinton did in fact have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, he was brought up on perjury charges for previous denying the affair under oath. Despite facing an embarrassing impeachment trial and further humiliations in the Starr report, Clinton served out his second term and remains married to Hillary. So what was the true consequence of his affair? Eight years of a Bush presidency.
Technique: Totally Shrewed
Cheater Meter: 3 A’s
It’s hard to say which has been harder for Jon Gosselin—the ten years he’s been married to his tantrum-prone wife, Kate or the dissolution of their marriage on television following reports of his having an affair with a third grade teacher. When the story that launched a thousand tabloid covers broke, Kate Gosselin immediately went on the
Today show to deny the allegations. Jon, meanwhile, employed the curious move of not appearing with his nagging wife but issued a statement denying that he had cheated and that he was making his wife and eight children “my top priority.” Within six weeks, the Gosselins had filed for divorce and Jon was reportedly looking for a new life far away from Kate and the eight—in an apartment in Trump Towers in New York City.
Technique: Put a Sock in It
Cheater Meter: 2.5 A’s
Eliot Spitzer provides a cautionary tale for prostitute-inclined politicians: if you're going to pay for sex, it better be the boring kind, because once the scandal breaks the kinky details are bound to make it into the press. In Spitzer's case, a speedy resignation and apology couldn't save him from an embarrassing series of jokes about his reported habit of keeping his socks on in bed and his alleged disdain for condoms. Aside from the added humiliation, the entire scandal was particularly deadly for Spitzer because of his law and order image and his history of prosecuting criminals in prostitution cases. But after keeping a low profile for awhile, Spitzer has shown some resilience: he's now a columnist for Slate and the collapse of New York's political institutions has only made him look better in retrospect.
Technique: I Am What I Am
Cheater Meter: 2 A’s
Unlike most political scandals, New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey’s came with twist: he was accused of having an affair with another man. In 2004, facing threats that his homeland security adviser, Golan Cipel, was about to file a sexual harassment case against him, McGreevey called a press conference with his wife by his side, resigned from office, and announced to the world that he was “a gay American.” Career over. Marriage over. And then it got ugly. McGreevey’s ex fought him over custody of their daughter, and the allegations started flying: She accused him of showing nude photos to his then five-year-old, while a former McGreevey aide claimed that he had had threesomes with the governor and his wife for years. (The couple was awarded joint custody.) Then in 2006, McGreevey began his awkward public rehabilitation with a book called
The Confession and even went on Oprah to talk about his life as a gay American. Today, McGreevey lives with his partner and is studying to be an Episcopal priest.
Technique: Quiet on the Tee
Cheater Meter: 1.5 A’s (double bogey)
Up until November 2009, the only record Tiger Woods appeared to be taking aim at was Jack Nicklaus' 18 major PGA Tour wins, but as a seemingly neverending series of mistresses came forward in the first few weeks of December, it looked like Tiger was pursuing another record entirely—Wilt Chamberlain's never-surpassed feat of sleeping with 20,000 women. Tiger's troubles may have started with an early-morning road trip that got him as far as the fire hydrant on his front lawn, but they spiraled out of control quickly as the golfer was slow to respond to rumors that his accident had been prompted by marital discord (and an angry, golf club-wielding wife), and as reports came out that weekend that the police were having trouble tracking Woods down, public opinion soured quickly against him. No longer able to maintain close control over his image, Woods' once-adroit management team was only able to watch as mistress after mistress—as many as 10, if rumors are believed—came forward to a scandal-hungry press with stories of "freaky," sometimes sleeping pill-fueled sex. Some crisis-management experts say he has no choice but to lie low, and predict a comeback. But so far, so bad.
Technique: Bring It On
Cheater Meter: 1.5 A’s
The prototype for the modern sex scandal, onetime presidential hopeful Gary Hart was literally asking to get caught before reporters unearthed his career-ending affair. When asked before about allegations that he had been unfaithful to his wife, Hart told reporters that he had nothing to hide, saying that if "anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored." Less bored than he thought—reports of a trip aboard a boat called
Monkey Business with 29-year old model, Donna Rice, quickly surfaced, forcing him to end his presidential campaign. Within weeks, the National Enquirer had turned up pictures of Hart with Rice on his lap. Hart's lesson in hubris seems so obvious it almost doesn't deserve mention, but seriously, politicians, if you're going to cheat, don't openly challenge reporters to follow you while you visit your mistress.
Technique: From Cad to Worse
Cheater Meter: 1A
John Edwards used one of the oldest tricks in the book when he first confessed his affair, conducting his big interview on the subject on the night of the 2008 Olympics' opening ceremony. Unfortunately, the attempt to bury the story in a busy news cycle failed, mostly because Edwards' "tell-all" interview raised more questions than it answered. Some of these outstanding issues, namely whether Edwards fathered Rielle Hunter's child and whether he bribed staffer Andrew Young to take the fall on his behalf, are still generating headlines, making any political comeback for the former presidential candidate highly unlikely. There's a long list of "don't"s that would-be confessors could take from Edwards experience, but the biggest is to not leave any juicy details left on the table that could reopen old wounds later.
Technique: The Fool in Love
Cheater Meter: 1A
To be fair to Mark Sanford, he didn't exactly have a long time to prepare his strategy for dealing with the fallout from his affair seeing as he had only landed in the country hours earlier after visiting his mistress in Buenos Aires. But no amount of jet lag can excuse the ongoing disaster that is the Sanford confession. In his first press conference on the issue, he went from giving too much information ("that whole sparking thing") to not enough (he failed to mention romantic encounters with other woman). In a subsequent series of interviews with the Associated Press, a crying Sanford kept digging, calling his Argentine lover his "soul mate" and waxing poetic about their illicit affair. "This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day." Could he at least pretend that he's sort of bummed about straying from his marriage and not just about getting caught? He added that he had "crossed the lines" with other women as well, but not "the ultimate line," leaving yet another thread for tabloids to pull at in hopes of finding more juicy details.
